Social networks, or social utilities that track and enable connections between users (including people, businesses, and other entities), have become prevalent in recent years. In particular, social-networking websites allow users to communicate information more efficiently. For example, a user may post contact information, background information, job information, hobbies, or other user-specific data to a location associated with the user on a social-networking website. Other users can then review the posted data by browsing user profiles or searching for profiles including specific data. Social-networking websites also allow users to associate themselves with other users, thus creating a web of connections among the users of social-networking website. These connections among the users can be leveraged by the website to offer more relevant information to each user in view of the users' own stated interests in their connections.
A system, such as a website, that allows users to interact with the system typically stores a record for each users of the system. These records may comprise information provided by the user as well as information gathered by the system related to activities or actions of the user on the system. For example, a system may require a user to enter information such as contact information, gender, preferences, interests, and the like in an initial interaction with the system, which is stored in the user's record. A user's activities on the system, such as frequency of access of particular information on the system, also provide information that can be stored in the user's record. The system may then use information provided by the user and information gathered about the user, to customize interactions of the system with the user. For example, a website selling books may keep track of a users previous purchases and provide the user with information on related books during subsequent interactions with the system. Information in a user's profile may also be used by the system to target sponsored stories that are of interest to the user. Using information collected from and about users results in a system that is more efficient and beneficial for both the user and the system.
Users interacting with the social network may post stories or status updates to a live activity stream, such as a “news feed.” A news feed is a data format typically used for providing users with frequently updated content. A social-networking system may provide various news feeds to its users, where each news feed includes content relating to a specific subject matter or topic, or other users. Various pieces of content may be aggregated into a single news feed. In some implementations, a social-networking system may provide a news feed that includes selected entries corresponding to activities of a user's first-degree contacts or pages or topics that a user has indicated an interest for. Individual users of the social-networking system may subscribe to specific news feeds of their interest. A group of related actions may be presented together to a user of the social-networking system in the same news feed. For example, a news feed concerning the event organized through the social-networking system may include information about the event, such as its time, location, and attendees, and photos taken at the event, which have been uploaded to the social-networking system.
Generally, news feeds are customized for each member; only the status updates and stories posted by their connections are displayed. In this manner, members of the social network may quickly access their direct connections' status updates, story postings, and other interactions with the social network in a single stream, obviating the need to individually check their connections' profile pages.
However, given the vast number of contacts the average member of a social network has, and the prodigious amounts of status updates posted by users, it is possible that stories of interest to the user are lost in the unending stream of their news feed. Furthermore, sponsors may wish to pay for permanence of a particular story in members' news feeds; this functionality is unavailable in typical social-networking systems.
Typically sponsors pay for a static advertisement to be displayed to a member of the social network. In particular embodiments, advertisements may be displayed to a member's home page on the social network, mobile devices, third-party web pages and applications, television and other video streams, or any other particular display accessed by a member of the social network. Despite data-mining techniques that match users based on their preferences, activities, or other data stored in their social-networking profile to the most relevant sponsored or promoted stories, no system currently exists for promoting a story from a user's news feed to the sponsored-stories space of a social-network home page. Sponsored or promoted stories generated from actual stories in users' news feeds are more likely to be viewed by users, because they generally involve interactions or suggestions by their connected friends or fan pages that they are connected or subscribed to.